Also, if anything goes wrong with it you have to do a full restore on it by connecting it to a computer running iTunes.

Do you still have to use Firewire to do the restore? We might be hosed.

You fly all the time on planes that you can't service.

But you're not the owner. Do the airlines send their craft back to Boeing when they break down, or do they have their own mechanics?

You think Boeing lets any schmuck work on their aircraft? The airlines have Boeing certified and trained mechanics that work closely with Boeing to conduct maintenance and repairs. Apple, similarly, allows you to become an authorized maintenance service provider for their products.

In any case, the airlines are often not the owners either. A lot of new aircraft are actually leased from Boeing or Airbus. That's kind of how I view my cell phone really. A leased appliance that I'm happy to let the maintenance of which be someone else's problem.

Sometimes they do (cf Dreamliner battery problems).

Those aren't users. The owner of the plane is the user. They use it to get paying customers. If American Airlines had to ship broken planes back to the Apple factory for service and repairs, that would be a problem.

You can get much faster rocket elsewhere for half the price.

If you could order one... The materials would be crap.... It'd need a ROM from a Russian ICBM to function properly On the flight into space you'd need to reboot it several times..... The manufacturer and the launch pad owners would keep the updates from the pilots.

It would be so damn beautiful though.

Yeah, when the crew of Applo 13 are told they can't repair the air scrubbers because they were glued to the frame of the spacecraft, they would collectively gasp.

well...do you want to fly on a plane where any passenger can go fiddle around with the jet engine or avionics?

Planes are user-serviceable. The user is the owner, which would be the airline. In the case of an Apple rocket, presumably the manufacturer would be the only one that could service it. This would be like all of the major airlines needing to send their planes back to Airbus or Boeing whenever service needed to be done.

Just bring it to the genius bar.